Platinum Consort, Scott Inglis Kidger In The Dark

This is the third, and apparently, the last single of OMD taken from their 2013 album "English Electric". The CD is divided in two parts: "Night Café" in five different versions and… five non-album B-Sides, including the never released before "Kill Me". As per "Night Café", we have of course, the album version that really didn't need any further editing or remixing as the song in itself is just brilliant. A pure typical OMD songs in the vein of ‘Secret’ or "If You Leave", with a more melancholic and darker side probably. The four remixes are just what a New Wave fan expect from a remix: just enough experimentation and twittering, extending and fresh production with great respect of the artist's work, keeping some synth lines and not playing too much with vocals.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are one of the earliest, most commercially successful, and enduring synth pop groups. Inspired most by the advancements of Kraftwerk and striving at one point "to be ABBA and Stockhausen," they've continually drawn from early electronic music as they've alternately disregarded, mutated, or embraced the conventions of the three-minute pop song. Outside their native England, OMD are known primarily for "Maid of Orleans" and the Pretty in Pink soundtrack smash "If You Leave," yet they scored 18 additional charting U.K. singles in the '80s alone. These hits supported inventive albums such as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (1980), Architecture & Morality (1981), and commercial suicide-turned-cult classic Dazzle Ships (1983)…

On their second album since their 2005 reunion, synth pop pioneers Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark rekindle the spirit of two new wave classics, the first being their own "slept on" masterpiece from 1983, Dazzle Ships, an album that pushed the boundaries sonically. From the blippy, robotic, and almost musique concrète opener "Please Remain Seated" to the geometric sleeve that credits DZ designer Peter Saville with Executive Art Design, English Electric carries on the pop-meets-avant-garde spirit of that fan favorite album. It gives up a love song like "Night Café" that's so glossed and polished that it could be used in a John Hughes film, and then it offers an edgy swerve like "Decimal," where answering machine messages, countdowns, and other disembodied voices provided some kind of silicon chorus that's equally majestic and precise…

If OMD's debut album showed the band could succeed just as well on full-length efforts as singles, Organisation upped the ante even further, situating the band in the enviable position of at once being creative innovators and radio-friendly pop giants. That was shown as much by the astounding lead track and sole single from the album, "Enola Gay." Not merely a great showcase for new member Holmes, whose live-wire drumming took the core electronic beat as a launching point and easily outdid it, "Enola Gay" is a flat-out pop classic - clever, heartfelt, thrilling, and confident, not to mention catchy and arranged brilliantly. The outrageous use of the atomic bomb scenario - especially striking given the era's nuclear war fears - informs the seemingly giddy song with a cut-to-the-quick fear and melancholy, and the result is captivating…

This is the third, and apparently, the last single of OMD taken from their 2013 album "English Electric". The CD is divided in two parts: "Night Café" in five different versions and… five non-album B-Sides, including the never released before "Kill Me". As per "Night Café", we have of course, the album version that really didn't need any further editing or remixing as the song in itself is just brilliant. A pure typical OMD songs in the vein of ‘Secret’ or "If You Leave", with a more melancholic and darker side probably. The four remixes are just what a New Wave fan expect from a remix: just enough experimentation and twittering, extending and fresh production with great respect of the artist's work, keeping some synth lines and not playing too much with vocals.

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD) return with their 14th studio album Bauhaus Staircase, over six years after the triumph of their Top 4-charting record The Punishment of Luxury. The album was born from the impetus to kickstart new explorations during lockdown when as Andy McCluskey admits: “I rediscovered the creative power of total boredom.”

This live album was recorded at OMD's show at the Liverpool Empire on 4th November, the hometown show on the 40th Anniversary Greatest Hits tour.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are one of the earliest, most commercially successful, and enduring synth pop groups. Inspired most by the advancements of Kraftwerk and striving at one point "to be ABBA and Stockhausen," they've continually drawn from early electronic music as they've alternately disregarded, mutated, or embraced the conventions of the three-minute pop song. Outside their native England, OMD are known primarily for "Maid of Orleans" and the Pretty in Pink soundtrack smash "If You Leave," yet they scored 18 additional charting U.K. singles in the '80s alone…

The tracklisting collects together all of the B sides, radio edits, extended 12″ mixes and remixes from The Punishment of Luxury era and brings them to CD for the very first time.
This B Sides & Bonus Material release effectively rounds up three singles, delivering ten tracks made up of three non-album B-sides, three single mixes and four extended mixes.

With the split between McCluskey and the rest of the band resolved by the former's decision to carry on with the band's name on his own, the question before Sugar Tax's appearance was whether the change would spark a new era of success for someone who clearly could balance artistic and commercial impulses in a winning fashion. The answer, based on the album - not entirely. The era of Architecture and Morality wouldn't be revisited anyway, for better or for worse, but instead of delightful confections with subtle heft like "Enola Gay" and "Tesla Girls," on Sugar Tax McCluskey is comfortably settled into a less-spectacular range of songs that only occasionally connect. Like fellow refugees from the early '80s such as Billy Mackenzie and Marc Almond, McCluskey found himself bedeviled in the early '90s with an artistic block that resulted in his fine singing style surrounded by pedestrian arrangements and indifferent songs…

If OMD's debut album showed the band could succeed just as well on full-length efforts as singles, Organisation upped the ante even further, situating the band in the enviable position of at once being creative innovators and radio-friendly pop giants. That was shown as much by the astounding lead track and sole single from the album, "Enola Gay." Not merely a great showcase for new member Holmes, whose live-wire drumming took the core electronic beat as a launching point and easily outdid it, "Enola Gay" is a flat-out pop classic - clever, heartfelt, thrilling, and confident, not to mention catchy and arranged brilliantly. The outrageous use of the atomic bomb scenario - especially striking given the era's nuclear war fears - informs the seemingly giddy song with a cut-to-the-quick fear and melancholy, and the result is captivating…